Sisters, Make Up Your Minds

People who rise from oppression can do one of two things: they can either forgive and move on, or they can become like their oppressors.

Women as a group are the most oppressed class of people on earth. It doesn't matter where they live, what they look like, or how they behave, all women will at some point of their lives meet the cold reality of being treated with disrespect just because they are women. For some it is just an inconvenience (such as not being able to take the car to the shop because she knows she'll get ripped off), but for some it is a matter of life and death. Thousands of women are beaten, assaulted, maimed, and murdered just because they are women.

Nineteenth and Twentieth-century Western women made a huge impact on how society saw them by securing rights to themselves and their daughters that other women in the world could only dream off. Emboldened by their success, some women chose the path of moving on, but some chose the path of becoming like their former oppressors. Just like men who can't make up their minds whether to have a woman undress or cover up until one wonders if there is a woman underneath the garments, some women claim oppression when they see a scantily clad woman, and when they they have to guess whether it is a woman they are looking at. There is no difference between a man who can't make up his mind whether to seek power or pleasure, and a woman who can't make up her mind about the same. A woman knows her power is found in her body, and whether she dresses to hide it (to avoid unwanted attention), or undresses (to get the attention she wants), she is claiming she has the right to act as she pleases. It would help their cause enormously if women would decide if they want to be treated with respect or if they just want to get their way.

Clothes are chosen according to the occasion, and there are many occasions in life that require different kinds of clothing styles. Yet, if women insist that they have the right to choose indiscriminately and disregard what their brothers have to say, they have become what they claim men have been and still are, for one of the claims feminism has made for decades is that men do not listen to women. We need to listen to each other if we want equal rights. Equal rights requires that none have more rights than others, which is why it would be helpful if everyone would just make up their minds about oppression and what it looks like, and what we should do to eliminate it.